Blair isn't the only person to be gleefully dishing the dirt on Westminster, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards

Was Tony Blair a drunk? Has Gordon Brown zero emotional intelligence? Is William Hague straight, gay or bisexual? Will the Miliband brothers commit fratricide? Whatever happened to decent British reserve?

Was Tony Blair a drunk? Has Gordon Brown zero emotional intelligence? Is William Hague straight, gay or bisexual? Will the Miliband brothers commit fratricide? Whatever happened to decent British reserve?

It has been an exciting week for prurient students of UK political leaders, past and present. There was New Labour ex-leader Blair, who launched his memoir, A Journey (a rattling good read, which I'm hugely enjoying), to wall-to-wall media frenzy. Dishing the requisite amount of dirt to fill his publisher's wallet, he gave us titbits about his sex life with Cherie, as well as the confession that the Blair-Brown wars known as the TB/GBs had driven HIM to drink more than he thought he should -- the one-time Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid, product of a Scottish Roman Catholic working-class family, commented: "Where I come from, a gin and tonic, two glasses of wine -- you wouldn't give that to a budgie."

Blair also explained that Brown, who had bullied and blackmailed him for years, had no gut instinct, political feelings or emotional intelligence.

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